The Structure of Objects PDF
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THE STRUCTURE OF OBJECTS This page intentionally left blank The Structure of Objects KATHRIN KOSLICKI 1 1 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwidein Oxford NewYork Auckland CapeTown DaresSalaam HongKong Karachi KualaLumpur Madrid Melbourne MexicoCity Nairobi NewDelhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto Withofficesin Argentina Austria Brazil Chile CzechRepublic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore SouthKorea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam OxfordisaregisteredtrademarkofOxfordUniversityPress intheUKandincertainothercountries PublishedintheUnitedStates byOxfordUniversityPressInc.,NewYork KathrinKoslicki2008 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted DatabaserightOxfordUniversityPress(maker) Firstpublished2008 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced, storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans, withoutthepriorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress, orasexpresslypermittedbylaw,orundertermsagreedwiththeappropriate reprographicsrightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproduction outsidethescopeoftheaboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment, OxfordUniversityPress,attheaddressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisbookinanyotherbindingorcover andyoumustimposethesameconditiononanyacquirer BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Dataavailable TypesetbyLaserwordsPrivateLimited,Chennai,India PrintedinGreatBritain onacid-freepaperby BiddlesLtd.,King’sLynn,Norfolk ISBN978–0–19–926776–7 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Tomyparents, EleonoreandKarliPongratz IngratitudeforalltheloveandsupportI havereceivedfromthemovertheyears. This page intentionally left blank The Author Kathrin Koslicki was born in Munich, Germany; she is currently Associate ProfessorofPhilosophyattheUniversityofColorado,Boulder,andistheauthor ofmanyarticlesinmetaphysics,thephilosophyoflanguageandAncientGreek philosophy,particularlyAristotle.HerworkhasappearedinHistoryofPhilosophy Quarterly, Synthese,Nous,Mindand Language,PhilosophicalStudies,theJournal of Philosophy, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research and Dialectica, among otherpublications. ADDRESS KathrinKoslicki, DepartmentofPhilosophy, UniversityofColorado,Boulder, Hellems169 UCB232 Boulder,CO80309-0232 E-mail:[email protected] This page intentionally left blank Preface The main purpose of this book is to give an analysis of ordinary material objects, those material objects to which we take ourselves to be committed in ordinary,scientificallyinformeddiscourse.Inpursuingthistask,Iwanttofocus inparticularonthequestionofhowthepartsofsuchobjects,assumingthatthey haveparts,arerelatedtothewholeswhichtheycompose.Thatmost,orpossibly all,ordinarymaterialobjectshavepartsItaketobeanobviousintuitivedatum: we would commonly say, for example, that among the parts of a tree are its branches,itstrunk,itsleavesanditsroots;amongthepartsofatableareitslegs and its top; among the parts of an H O molecule are its two hydrogen atoms 2 anditssingleoxygenatom.AsIunderstandit,then,toaskthequestion,‘‘What are ordinarymaterialobjects?’’,isatleastinparttoask,‘‘Howarethesewholes relatedtothepartsthatcomposethem?’’,or‘‘Whatisthenatureoftherelations ofparthood andcompositionformaterialobjects?’’. Many philosophers today find themselves in the grip of an exceedingly deflationaryconceptionofwhatitmeanstobeanobject,accordingtowhichany plurality ofobjects,no matterhowdisparate orgerrymandered, itselfcomposes an object, even if the objects in question fail to exhibit interesting similarities, internalunity,cohesionorcausal interactionamongst each other.To illustrate, according to this approach, George W. Bush’s left hand together with the Eiffel Tower compose a further object, their sum, aggregate or fusion, which is partially located in the White House and partially located in Paris. The commitment to such initially counterintuitive objects follows from the belief thatnoprincipledsetofcriteriaisavailablebymeansofwhichtodistinguishthe intuitivelygerrymanderedobjectsfromthecommonsensicalones;myprojectin thisbookistopersuadethereaderthatsystematicprinciplesbymeansofwhich compositioncanberestrictedcanbefoundandhencethatweneednotembrace thisdeflationaryapproachtothequestionofwhatitmeanstobeanobject. To this end, I develop in what follows a more full-blooded neo-Aristotelian accountofparthoodandcompositionaccordingtowhichobjectsarestructured wholes:itisintegraltotheexistenceandidentityofanobject,onthisconception, thatitspartsexhibitacertainmannerofarrangement.Forexample,inorderfor theretobeanH Omolecule,thetwohydrogenatomsandoneoxygenatomthat 2 composeitmustbearrangedintheparticularmannerofchemicalbonding,which requirestheatomsinquestiontoshareelectrons.Thisstructure-basedconception ofparthoodandcomposition,alongwithsomeofitshistoricalprecursorsaswell assomeofitscontemporarycompetitors,areexploredindetailbelow. The material put forth in this book, over the years, has been presented at numerous talks and conferences and has benefited from the help of many
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